Critical Information Studies

Various thinkers have dealt over the years with the influence of technology on how humans find their place in the world (Habermas 2003; Heidegger [1953] 2008; [1953] 1996). The technological developments of recent times have great potential to influence this positioning. Due to the extreme changes and the challenges to the traditional place of human in the world, some even call these developments the post-human era (Braidotti 2013; Hayles 1999; Pepperell 2003). Walter Benjamin, as a philosopher with a broad social and cultural awareness, who lived a century ago, addressed the way in which the technology of his days, photography and cinema, changes the way human society is organized, towards the creation of art in general and the act of creation itself (Benjamin [1935] 2008; Ferris 2008; Goebel 2009). In this article, I examined how Benjamin diagnoses the impact of the technological changes on the culture of his time-the loss of the aura that accompanied the technical reproduction, following the technologies of photography and cinema. From this analysis, I will illustrate what can be learned from Benjamin regarding the reproduction processes carried out by today's information technologies and may offer an explanation for the cultural phenomena we encounter today. Of all the themes that can be learned from Benjamin, I will focus on the questions-how the possibilities of reproduction on the creation process itself change following the information technologies. And how the meaning of technology is shaped by the business / technological / political elite that produces it in relation to its consumers, us. Although Benjamin wrote after the new technologies of his day became established, he felt that they had not yet reached their potential and especially the potential for influence and change on the reorganization of human perception in the face of evolving technologies-"The film has not yet realized its true meaning, its real possibilities" ([1935] 2008, 9).

As part of a continuum of Native, Indigenous, and Aboriginal resistance, digital projects and repositories offer platforms to reckon with settler representations of space and peoples. Two projects, Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles (MILA) and Carrying Our Ancestors Home (COAH), redress the relationship between Native and Indigenous bodies, communities, and land as they provide pedagogical tools for tribal communities, institutions, and settlers to dismantle settler colonial narratives. Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles unsettles colonial cartographic and geographic knowledge as it weaves together the stories of the Native and Indigenous inhabitants who originally occupied and have come to occupy Los Angeles as the result of complex relocations and diasporic processes. Indigenous digital counter-mapping projects confront and re-orient the colonial gaze through a nuanced rendering of relationships with place and memory. Carrying Our Ancestors Home addresses the history and intricacies of repatriation and offers insight into how tribal communities and institutions address the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Digital repositories and archives facilitate the preservation of cultural heritage and lifeways while simultaneously evidencing the legacy of political mobilization and current activism by Native communities. Though largely based on Gabrielino/Tongva lands (Los Angeles), these projects seek to build solidarity amongst and serve as repositories for global Native, Indigenous, and Aboriginal communities.

The contemporary Critical Legal Research (“CLR”) project exhibits much diverse and vital thought. However, this Essay draws, in particular, on CLR strains in the explicit Marxist- and socialist-steeped traditions. Such a CLR framework posits that a transformative approach to the legal and broader socio-legal research and analysis regime—i.e., as operationalized through praxis modes like CLR-influenced “radical cause lawyering”—can help achieve true systemic re-formations beyond the white patriarchal capitalist paradigm, as necessarily coordinated from local to global scales.

Part I of this Essay outlines the tenets of such a CLR framework. Thereafter, Part II introduces the concept of “non-reformist reforms,” which unlike traditional reforms, are explicitly designed to help transcend the hegemonic liberal capitalist paradigm while simultaneously building the “people power” required for such genuinely emancipatory transformations of the ecological political economy. Part II next puts forth an exploration of how CLR-influenced radical cause lawyering could support such non-reformist reforms through theory, practice, and praxis—and concludes by utilizing an ecosocialist-influenced Green New Deal as a concrete illustration of potential CLR-supported non-reformist reforms in action.

Plagiarism is a folk devil into which is poured many of the challenges, problems and difficulties confronting higher education. This article investigates how software -Turnitin in particular-is 'solving' a particular 'crisis' in universities. However, I investigate how alternative strategies for the development of information literacy offer concrete, productive and imaginative trajectories for university staff and students.

From Ancient Times to the Present Day, writers have remarked on the unique power of music to evoke emotions, signal identity, and bond or divide entire societies, all without the benefit of literal representation. According to Aram Sinnreich, this power helps to explain why music has so often been regulated in societies around the globe---and why those regulations have been consistently resisted.

Mashed Up chronicles the rise of "configurability," an emerging musical and cultural moment rooted in today's global, networked communications infrastructure. Based on interviews with dozens of prominent DJs, attorneys, and music industry executives, the book argues that today's battles over sampling, file sharing, and the marketability of new styles such as "mash-ups" and "techno" presage social change on a far broader scale.

`Aram Sinnreich is a sage guide to the emerging, perplexing, and downright vital world of configurable culture. He brings together a potent combination of deep academic learning, leading industry analyst credentials, and performing artist street cred. No one knows better than Sinnreich how music and technology are co-evolving."---Michael Heller, author of The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives.

"The greatest strength of this book is the broad, interdisciplinary range of its appeal: audiences interested in musicology, digital rights, street culture, and many other subjects will find it interesting, and it is written in a style that members of the general public would also appreciate. It is a book that could be assigned to undergraduates who are music majors and for courses in which intellectual property is a theme."---Elizabeth Losh, author of Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes.

"Young people who make new music by sampling existing work, who `mash up' existing cultural materials to convey entirely new messages, have been portrayed as thieves and copyright violators. Yet, as Aram Sinnreich eloquently teaches, what they are actually doing is pioneering new forms of cultural creation."---Howard Rheingold, author of Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier.

"Mashed Up is an intellectual/emotional romp, filled with insights into the pleasures and paradoxes of our high-tech musical universe. Aram Sinnreich is an original thinker, a brilliant brother, and a bad mammajamma."---David Ritz, author of Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye.

Comment s’informait-on des affaires du temps aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles ? Ce livre explore les multiples dimensions de l’information en étudiant comment les données collectées sur le terrain des guerres ottomanes étaient transmises, reçues et traitées en Italie. Le croisement des sources militaires, administratives et diplomatiques permet de confronter les circuits et les supports de la veille stratégique opérée par les agents et les alliés du Saint-Siège sur la Méditerranée, à une époque où la région fait l’objet d’une attention renouvelée. L’information politique alimente les échanges diplomatiques européens et se nourrit d’eux ; elle est supposée réduire la part de risque et d’incertitude liée aux prises de décision et contribuer à la réactualisation constante des savoirs d’État ; ses formats et ses usages infléchissent le rapport des acteurs au temps, à l’espace et aux événements. Reconsidérant le rôle joué par les nouveaux médias, tels les Avvisi a mano et les gazettes, au sein de ces processus, l’analyse met en perspective les origines et les effets de l’invention de l’actualité avec les mutations des pratiques administratives. Examiné à la lumière de la Méditerranée, le gouvernement des nouvelles apparaît alors comme un élément décisif de la première révolution de l’information à l’époque moderne.

Every two weeks, a language becomes extinct with its last speaker (Strochlic 2018). With the current attempt of preserving and revitalizing endangered languages, tech giants like Microsoft have been at the forefront to tackle this issue with Artificial Intelligence (AI). This research proposal is for a interdisciplinary project that aims to examine how the intervention of AI-based technologies affect indigenous Māori people from New Zealand to gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship and interaction between technology and its users.

The US Army Future Combat Systems is a large-scale procurement program that will introduce a number of ‘manned’ and ‘unmanned’ platforms all of which will be completely interconnected into one layered network. Hailed as revolutionary, all of the FCS platforms in addition to being networked will include on-board or embedded training systems. This paper contends that the integration of embedded training systems into the US Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) exemplifies a form of post-disciplinary control that is endemic to contemporary discourses of strategic virtuosity. The concept of control is taken from Deleuze to account for a form of military training that does not operate under the logic of enclosure but rather through ubiquitous forms of adaptive management. From this the paper concludes by considering the implications of what happens when the programmatic scripts are treated as being equivalent to the open-ended and indeterminate range of possible events and outcomes that characterize the unscripted world of human and nonhuman actors.

The main goal of this paper is to conceptualize a seeping commodification . Author claims we are in the midst of a considerable qualitative transformation in the processes of commodification that is, in large part, owed to an overwhelming capitalist enclosure of the wider communicative field. The key reason for what seems to be an important qualitative transformation in the commodification process lies in the fact that communication and information flows today run through most social relations and spheres—which non-critical approaches often explain with the concept of ‘mediatization of society’. A materialist approach, distinctive of political economy of communication, enables a critique of these processes. In an epoch, in which capital has enclosed the wider field of communication, mediatization is nothing else than a continuing commodification of our everyday lives. Author claims that commodification of communication and informational resources must be seen as a long-term process, which has accompanied the rise of capitalism. A considerable proliferation of the economic importance of communication, information, and culture has however been enhanced by political interventions occurring in the last decades (which were a response to the economic tendencies of the time), and while the immediate results are observable especially in the proliferation of the new information and communication technologies and the global role of intellectual property rights, the wider social consequences of these developments have been much broader and more influential. This study proceeds from the perspective of historical materialism and adopts dialectics in an attempt to grasp contradictory social changes. The analysis is done through different methods of historicizing: firstly, by observing long-term changes in communication, information, and culture, as they have been slowly transformed into commodities produced for market exchange since the emergence of capitalism; and, secondly, by defining fundamental political and economic processes occurring in recent decades that help with an explanation of the rise in the influence of communication and information in the current epoch.

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today. Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas – Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

The paper proposes a critical approach to information systems definition, design, and development (ISD) grounded in discourse theory, semiotics, practical philosophy and critical systems thinking. It aims to support IS researchers and practitioners in the difficult process of identifying and scrutinizing the diverse issues they  face in any ISD project. Two main components of the approach are a hierarchic arrangement of these issues, and of the basic kinds of validity claims they imply, in the form of a philosophical staircase; and a practical framework for critical discourse on these claims called critically systemic discourse. The present first part introduces the staircase and discusses the relevance of the discursive principle for dealing with the various validity claims raised by each one of its steps. The second part will present a
discursive framework for applying the staircase.

DNS amplification attacks massively exploit open recursive DNS servers mainly for performing bandwidth consumption DDoS attacks. The amplification effect lies in the fact that DNS response messages may be substantially larger than DNS query messages. In this paper, we present and evaluate a novel and practical method that is able to distinguish between authentic and bogus DNS replies. The proposed scheme can effectively protect local DNS servers acting both proactively and reactively. Our analysis and the corresponding real-usage experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme offers a flexible, robust and effective solution.

This paper argues that the current military program of transformation can be understood as both an institutional and a systemic adaptation to the increasing emphasis being placed upon the network form. Increasingly important to the viability of networked military forces are intelligent software agents that communicate with users and each other as they find, filter, format, and share information. By addressing the role of software agents within network-enabled forms of warfighting, it is argued that the aspiration to self organization in warfare exemplifies the faith in the market model over the command model in economics, information, and warfare. In adapting complexity theory to warfare and adopting heterachical forms of organization, this paper concludes that a different paradigm of governance is being espoused; one that is not traditionally associated with military organizations. And while at first glance, the greater autonomy granted to the nodes within the network does seem less authoritarian, in the end this is more indicative of a neo-liberal vision of sociality founded upon a particular account of the division of labor than it is an extension of democratic rights.

One of the main objectives of this research paper is to map the security landscape of cloud computing systems and services running on Critical Infrastructures. In fulfilling this aim, first the cloud architecture will be laid out to better understand the cloud security threats in terms of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA). Next, the paper will represent different types of attackers targeting the cloud while offering a comparison of traditional cyber attackers and attackers on the cloud. In the second section, the relevance of the cloud for Critical Infrastructures will be covered as it is significantly important to understand their interaction. In doing this, CII Protection (CIIP) programs of different countries will be visited as well. The main strength of second section is the investigation of different types of attacks targeting the Cloud on CII. This investigation ultimately will lead to a discussion whether attacking methods targeting the cloud on CII could be exploited by different types of cloud attackers or not.

We present in this paper the use of a security mechanism to handle the protection of network security components, such as Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems. Our approach consists of a kernel-based access control method which intercepts and cancels forbidden system calls launched by a potential remote attacker. This way, even if the attacker gains administration permissions, she will not achieve her purpose. To solve the administration constraints of our approach, we use a smart-card based authentication mechanism for ensuring the administrator's identity. Through the use of a cryptographic protocol, the protection mechanism verifies administrator's actions before holding her the indispensable privileges to manipulate a component. Otherwise, the access control enforcement will come to its normal operation. We also show in this paper an overview of the implementation of this mechanism on a research prototype, developed for GNU/Linux systems, over the Linux Security Modules (LSM) framework.

This book documents the f irst life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari's challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab's participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

We present a novel Intrusion Detection System able to detect complex attacks to SCADA systems. By complex attack, we mean a set of commands (carried in Modbus packets) that, while licit when considered in isolation on a single-packet basis, interfere with the correct behavior of the system. The proposed IDS detects such attacks thanks to an internal representation of the controlled SCADA system and a corresponding rule language, powerful enough to express the system's critical states. Furthermore, we detail the ...

We present in this paper the use of a security mechanism to handle the protection of network security components, such as Firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems. Our approach consists of a kernel-based access control method which intercepts and cancels forbidden system calls launched by a potential remote attacker. This way, even if the attacker gains administration permissions, she will not achieve her purpose. To solve the administration constraints of our approach, we use a smart-card based authentication mechanism for ensuring the administrator’s identity. Through the use of a cryptographic protocol, the protection mechanism verifies administrator’s actions before holding her the indispensable privileges to manipulate a component. Otherwise, the access control enforcement will come to its normal operation. We also show in this paper an overview of the implementation of this mechanism on a research prototype, developed for GNU/Linux systems, over the Linux Security Modules (LSM) framework.

*La version française suit*
*Please circulate widely*/*Excuse cross-posting*

We are pleased to announce the Call for Proposals (CFP) for CAPAL15: Academic Librarianship and Critical Practice, the second annual conference of the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL), which will be held May 31-June 2, 2015 as part of Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2015 in Ottawa, Ontario, which lies in unceded Algonquin territory.

The conference theme, critical practice, speaks to the intersection of academic librarianship with purposeful critical reflection on the dominant ways of thinking, speaking, and acting that characterize our profession. We envision elaboration of this theme through conversations about professional issues, civic engagement, theory, and day-to-day practice, and invite broad participation from all those with an interest in fostering critical inquiry in all aspects of academic librarianship. For a full description of the theme and list of potential topics, please see the CFP attached to this email or online at bit.ly/CAPAL15CFP.

The deadline for proposals is December 8, 2014.

Dave Hudson, Program Chair, [email protected]
On behalf of the CAPAL15 Program Committee

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*Prière de faire circuler à vos réseaux*
*S-v-p excusez les envois multiples*

Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer l’appel de propositions pour la conférence ACBAP15: Bibliothéconomie académique et la démarche critique, la deuxième conférence de l’Association canadienne des bibliothécaires académiques professionnels (CAPAL/ACBAP) qui se tiendra du 31 mai au 2 juin 2015 lors du Congrès des sciences humaines 2015 à Ottawa, Ontario, qui se trouve sur le territoire Algonquin.

Le thème de la conférence mettra l'accent sur la démarche critique: le croisement de notre travail en tant que bibliothécaire avec la réflexion critique concernant les approches, les pensées, les actions et les paroles dominantes dans le domaine de la bibliothéconomie académique. Nous envisageons l’élaboration de ce thème à travers l’échange des idées sur les sujets professionnels tels que la pratique, la théorie et l’engagement professionnel et civique, et nous invitons tous ceux et celles qui ont intérêt à favoriser la recherche critique dans tous les aspects de la bibliothéconomie académique. Pour de plus amples renseignements et une liste de sujets potentiels, veuillez trouvez ci-joint l'appel aux propositions ou suivre le lien bit.ly/ACBAP15AP.

La date limite pour les propositions est le 8 décembre 2014.

Dave Hudson, Président du Comité du programme, [email protected]
Au nom du Comité du programme

Inter-dependency evaluation through quantitative approaches is one of the open challenges in Critical Infrastructure Protection. The incapability to conduct appropriate networks inter-dependencies measurements undermines the possibility that the Critical Infrastructures protection programs can correctly assign resources and efforts for mitigation solutions targeted to the most important risks. This paper describes the approach and metrics used in the "Methodology for Interdependencies Assessment" EU Project to asses interdependencies in ICT and Power System networks. The major project finding, metrics applicability results and scalability issues are described in the paper.

This book documents the f irst life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today.

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today. Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas – Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

This book documents the first life-cycle of the Post-Media Lab (2011-2014). Taking up Fèlix Guattari’s challenge, the Lab aimed to combine social and media practices into collective assemblages of enunciation in order to confront social monoformity. Here we draw together some key essays, images and art projects by the Lab’s participants, as well as a close documentation of its associated events, talks, and exhibitions, to create a vivid portrayal of post-media practice today. Edited by Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles & Oliver Lerone Schultz With contributions by: Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Micha Cárdenas, Sean Dockray, Mina Emad, Bogdan Dragos & Inigo Wilkins, Fabien Giraud, Adnan Hadzi & James Stevens, Martin Howse & Jonathan Kemp, irational.org, Anthony Iles, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Gordan Savičić, Moritz Queisner, Rózsa Zita Farkas – Part of the PML Books series. A collaboration between Mute & the Post-Media Lab

... Although many models have been developed to study particular contexts and single infrastruc-ture sectors, a global strategy to represent and manage the complex is-sue of infrastructure dependency has not been deployed yet. ... 2.1 A sociologic Approach ...

The Collaborative for Historical Information and Analysis (CHIA), a large-scale digital humanities project, aims to link world-historical data in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities; allow researchers to draw new connections and new conclusions from analyzing large-scale aggregated datasets; and provide for the long-term preservation of historical data. To accomplish these tasks, CHIA requires a coherent metadata framework to link data to their sources and each other (CHIA, NSF Grant Proposal). Work on geospatial gazetteers and temporal ontologies has already begun; however, in order to ensure the longevity of CHIA data, allow users to understand and access the data, and publish datasets for future use, defining a controlled vocabulary of topical metadata for CHIA’s data is vital. This research aims to define topical metadata practices for CHIA through the creation and definition of a controlled vocabulary that will add value to CHIA data and allow for future growth and change.

DNS amplification attacks massively exploit open recursive DNS servers mainly for performing bandwidth consumption DDoS attacks. The amplification effect lies in the fact that DNS response messages may be substantially larger than DNS query messages. In this paper, we present and evaluate a novel and practical method that is able to distinguish between authentic and bogus DNS replies. The proposed scheme can effectively protect local DNS servers acting both proactively and reactively. Our analysis and the corresponding real-usage experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme offers a flexible, robust and effective solution.

Google has become a central object of study for digital media scholars due to the power and impact wielded by the necessity to begin most engagements with social media via a search process, and the near-universality with which Google has been adopted and embedded into all aspects of the digital media landscape to respond to that need.  Therefore, the near-ubiquitous use of search engines, and Google, in particular, in the United States demands a closer inspection of what values are assigned to race and gender in classification and web indexing systems and the search results they return. It also calls for explorations into the source of these kinds of representations and how they came to be so fundamental to the classification of human beings. In this research, I am interested in knowing two things: what kinds of results do Google’s search engine provide about Black girls when keyword searching, and what do the results mean in historical and social contexts? I also want to know in what ways does Google reinforce hegemonic narratives. To answer these questions, I use Critical Discourse Analysis as a method to explore the ways that Google Search results on the words “Black girls” discursively reflect hegemonic social power and racist and sexist bias. This research points toward a type of cultural hegemony within Google’s results on racialized and gendered identities, which prioritize the interests of its commercial partners and advertisers, rather than rendering the social, political and economic interests of Black women and girls visible.2